Eric Daniels, group chief executive of Lloyds TSB, remains confident that his bank's proposed acquisition of Bank of Scotland parent, HBOS, will go through, despite a late appeal to the Competition Tribunal by the Merger Action Group, supported by a number of Scottish business figures and a cross-party group of MSPs.
"We're pretty confident the deal is going to go ahead," Daniels told The Herald, in his first in-depth interview in Scotland since the current banking crisis broke.
In Edinburgh to meet senior politicians, including First Minister Alex Salmond, and local business leaders, the American-born banker who will head up the enlarged Lloyds Banking Group if the tribunal does not throw a late spanner in the works after its hearing early next week, was out to reassure doubters.
"I'm not sure I'll ever be able to satisfy everyone who has a view," he conceded.
"I think all we can do is talk about what we think is going to happen, hopefully it will appeal to most. Certainly if we don't appeal to customers we don't have much of a business. We are very mindful of the various constituencies we have to serve."
HBOS shareholders meet to approve the deal on December 12. And Daniels doubts the Merger Action Group will derail that process.
"From the guidance we've been given the Secretary of State (Lord Mandelson) took a measured decision and followed procedures. We're advised that we should feel reasonably comfortable."
If HBOS shareholders approve the deal, the next tranche of senior appointments across the enlarged group will be announced before Christmas.
Archie Kane, the veteran Scottish banker who will become chief executive of the Scottish business, based in the Bank of Scotland's old HQ on Edinburgh's Mound, is to have a committee around him representing the various strands - retail, wholesale, insurance and wealth and International - in the enlarged group north of the border.
"We don't want a disjointed approach to the Scottish market. The pieces need to work well together, that's part of Archie's remit," says Daniels.
But will this layer of appointments or indeed the larger list due before Christmas, show the same bias towards Lloyds TSB people evident in the first round of senior appointments last month? Daniels insists there is a strong talent pool in both banks and that will inform the choices that are being made.
"I would venture to say that in the combined group we are going to have very healthy representation from both organisations," he said.
He also dropped a very big hint that the principal group identity in Scotland will be Bank of Scotland and that some of the more traditional ethos of its branches before the 2001 merger with Halifax may even re-appear on Scottish high streets.
He is, he reminds me, fully conversant with the history of an institution many Scots still refer to as The Bank.
Daniels first banking assignment was in Panama, where he lived for a time. He knows all about the Darien Scheme and how that bleak chapter in Scottish history was interwoven with the birth, in 1695, of Bank of Scotland.
"We are very respectful of the tradition of the Bank of Scotland. We understand how iconic it is and how meaningful it is as part of the fabric of Scottish society," he says.
Daniels is dismissive of those who argue that Lloyds was actually the weaker player in this government-brokered deal. "In fact what Lloyds brings is enormous funding strength," he insists. And that should allow HBOS to continue to pursue its growth strategy, whereas, when the securitisation and wholesale markets on which HBOS previously depended so heavily seized up, "that impacted HBOS's ability even to fund the balance sheet it currently enjoys".
He acknowledges that "in any downturn you are going to find pockets of weakness, things that don't work as well as during the more expansionary times." But he doesn't think they will be confined to the HBOS operations.
"We're going to find some in our portfolio as well." But in excess of five thousand man-days of work looking at both synergies and potential areas of impairment have left him confident he and his board know what they are taking on.
He is less clear about when the global banking system will resume normal lending. The secured market for interbank lending, once so "cheap and plentiful", has now completely disappeared.
"Only about a quarter of our balance sheet moves with bank rate," he explains. "We price savings, SME lending and some mortgages on bank rate. We don't have enough bank rate funds. So we borrow Libor funds and we price many of our mortgages over Libor." However currently demand for Libor funding is "enormous", while the supply is "not good".
It's not that liquidity has disappeared. It's just that it has gone into gilts, into the safest havens, into very short-term lending. That won't change "until investors and depositors have confidence again."
And while governments and central banks understand the problem and have taken the right kind of action, no one really knows when that essential confidence will return.
Daniels makes one last plea. Echoing former Financial Times editor now CBI chief, Richard Lambert, he cautions that the most complex financial crisis we have ever faced demands "a more measured conversation" by all involved.
"This is hard stuff," he says, "and no one yet knows the answer."
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